Between your kids' sports schedules, your sick mother-in-law and both of your full-time jobs ... it never seems like the right time to divorce. But delaying your decision to split can do more harm than good.
When a marriage or any romantic relationship sours, an affair is a painful yet convenient way to escape. It's easy to blame the affair, blame the person the affair was with or basically blame everything except the real problem: that someone's needs were not being met, so that person found a way to have them met elsewhere.
Six months after my husband died, I decided to venture out into the single’s world. I sauntered into a swanky downtown Chicago restaurant with a divorced female friend. She left me perched on a bar stool to go to the restroom. I stared at the glassware on the shelves behind the bar and a guy suddenly appeared, “So when did you get divorced? I replied, “I didn’t get divorced.” He said, “Well where’s your husband?”
By now we've all heard the statistics a zillion times: Half of all marriages end in divorce. But when you really weigh that, it's a scary thought, right? I mean, you're not standing there at the altar, all, "yeah, if this doesn't work, I'll trade him in for a new model," are you? I wasn't. But it's a frightening reality for many. Divorce happens, and sometimes it happens to us.
Life Isn't always fair. In fact sometimes it is very unfair. But we have to remember bad luck doesn't just happen to us. It is not personal. It is universal. Ernest Hemingway once said: "The world breaks everyone. and afterward,many are strong in the broken places." When we are going through adversity, it is not always possible to believe that everyone suffers loss and heartache. It feels and acts very personal when bad luck and rotten life experiences happen to good people.
"Why didn't someone tell me it was going to be so hard? I thought that after we were married things would settle down and we could just be happy together! How come we just fight—and our fights go around in circles and we never solve anything? I am not even sure I should have gotten married in the first place!"
The best way to have a happy relationship is to keep working on it, so even if you're not in a relationship rut, follow these 12 tips from our staff and you'll keep being happy!
Do you have daughters but not sons? How about a kid with ADHD? Did you smile in your yearbook photo? Anneli Rufus on the strange ways science can predict a marriage's success.
If you're not in a semi-happy marriage yourself, chances are you've seen one or know one intimately because the term describes a large number of marriages today. Semi-happy couples should be happy—on paper. If only they could live their marriages on paper instead of in real life! The semi-happy marriage is not bad enough to leave, but not good enough to fulfill. I conducted a survey for my book, Marriage Confidential, and found that 30 percent agreed that "most marriages I see around me aren't really happy or unhappy." 40 percent agreed, "most marriages that I see aren't really that happy."
Married couples of the world, we've got good news and bad news for ya. Let's start with the positive: Despite some slight fluctuations, the divorce rate has remained pretty stable for the last 50 years, even in light of a down economy. Now, the bad: Although the divorce rate is down, infidelity is up.
Despite high divorce rates, long-term love is not a fairytale. According to a study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, 48 percent of the 274 married Americans surveyed said they were "very intensely in love" with their spouses. In New York state, however, the figures were drastically different...
